I wake up with the worst hangover I can remember ever having. My head is attempting to cleanly split itself in half, after my face peels itself off of my skull. Maybe not in that order, but I am fairly convinced that something along those lines is about to happen.
I haven’t even tried to sit up yet. I’m debating on whether or not school is worth it today. Well, I mean, I debate on that every day. Usually I go just because what else is there to do, really? I mean, I will grant you that I am a complete screwed up mess that probably has completely flipped my lid, but I have not resigned myself to being a complete failure at this point. I’m still going to put some effort into life.
I grant you that maybe it is silly for me to hold into any hope that life is something more than a miserable blackhole of horribleness (and I say that in the most ironic and hung-over way possible), nonetheless, I’m going to cling to something along those lines. I force myself to open my eyes, light flooding into my brain and searing it in half with a chainsaw. I find the sensation comfortingly familiar as I scramble to bring to mind any half-baked notions about what happened last night and how I even got back here.
I remember grass, but that makes no sense. There is no grass, so I can’t remember grass. Unless I ventured outside the bvoundaries of the city. But no, I would not have done that. The city is like a prison. The city would not have let me leave. Not now, not yet, but perhaps one day… perhaps.
The note… yes, there was something with… my mind stops all thought suddenly, and my body completes a (at this moment) heroic feat, jumping to my feet, I scramble frantically around the room looking for the note. Anywhere, it has to be here. It can’t be gone.
I check my pockets. A paper, yes, there it is, but… no. The feel isn’t right. It’s too new, too crisp, no tears, and the folds are too neat. But what is this? I whip it out of my pocket and I try without success to focus on the slip of paper. It is at this point that I remember I am incredibly hungover, and I promptly run to the bathroom down the hall, wondering all the way how I’m even managing to move, and vomit everything in me into the toilet.
I curl up on the floor on the bathroom, pushing the door closed with my foot, silent tears filling my eyes. I unfold the crushed paper in my palm gently, flattening it against the floor. It’s a simple scrap of notebook paper, ripped in half, two punched holes, red lines up and down, blue lines across. The writing is in red. In a very familiar script. The most familiar thing in my world, it curves gently across the page, like one last thought of home.
I run my fingers across the letters, outlining each one with my fingernail without really reading or comprehending it. After staring at it for awhile, in between bouts of gut-wrenching hurling, I take a few moments to process the words. It’s simple, to the point:
Dear Anna,
Hello. Perhaps you do not remember me this morning. You were quite stoned last night. I thought about it, and decided the best chance I had to see you again was this. I have your note. You will have to come find me in order to retrieve it. I am certain that you do not remember where you were last night. In fact, I am not sure you ever knew. Because of this, I have included information on how to get back there. Ask for Jack. I took your fake ID, by the way. It was awful, whoever made it should owe you money back on that one. But I think you’ve got better things to do than spend your life in bars. I’m looking forward to seeing you soon.
He did not sign, and I doubt Jack’s his real name. So I have to go on some hunt after a man whose name I don’t even know. This sounds sketchy even to me at this point, and I can barely think right now.
I puke into the toilet for what seems like the millionth time, wondering what I did last night to make this morning so awful. I pull my phone out of my pocket, wondering if it even is the morning. 5:36pm. Of course it isn’t the morning, silly of me to think it would have been.
I momentarily debate on whether or not I’m going to retrieve this tonight, torn somewhere between indignation and curiosity. Though going to fetch my paper is exactly the thing that I want to do, at an attempt to move, my body responds with an emphatic no.
Spending the day curled up on my bathroom floor it is, then.
I wonder what it feels like to be dead. I wonder if this is what it feels like to be dead. This lingering, longing feeling, like I’m too far away from home – from what I am meant to be – to ever attain a desirable end or rest in any comfort.
Hot tears wind their way down my face, and I do not even fight. I let them fall, careless of how I appear at the moment. It does not seem to matter so much, anyways. When no one is watching you or wanting you or waiting to catch you when you fall, it makes it that much easier to fall. There is not anyone waiting at the bottom.
This really should not make me cry. It is hardly a new or a profound realization. I think, though, there are some days that make it harder than others. Some days I really am okay. Some days I wake up and I feel fine and great and like the world belongs to me, and then there are some days, days like these – where nothing in the world seems to have any sense or reason. This is one of those days where the entire world is against me.
I vaguely realize that the world is probably not against me, and it is mostly the large quantities of alcohol that I consumed last night. And maybe some drugs. I desperately try to remember what I took last night, so that I remember never to do that again. Of course I cannot remember. That would make everything way too easy. Or whatever.
I stopped making sense to myself awhile ago.
I lay on this floor, trembling violently, unable to quit. Somehow I drag myself down to the kitchen; half stumbling, half crawling. I lean against the dark wooden cupboards, remembering why the kitchen is my least favorite room of the house. There is something just a little bit too perfect about it. White tiled floor, dark cupboards, stainless steel, and perfectly clean – immaculate – far cleaner than it should be. It seems like kitchens should look a little bit lived in, like there’s a family to use them. This looks far from lived in. It looks abandoned and lonely and cold. The metal is too unsmudged and the sink is unused. There are no dents on the cupboards, no memories encased in the room at all. Just some lonely appliances that look underused and overpriced, and probably are.
I stretch out across the floor and pull a bottle of wine from the rack. It seems somewhat ridiculous to sit on the floor of my kitchen, alone, drinking wine, but at the moment I am going to ignore that fact and do whatever I want. It si not as though anyone cares, after all. I sit up and run my hand over the counter, searching, and oh, there it is, a corkscrew. I pop the cork off the top and take a swig of the stuff, wincing as my entire body protests to the idea of being alive, much less moving.
I lay back against the cupboards, letting myself cry a little more than is probably necessary. It occurs to me that my parents should probably be home. It occurs to me, also, that they are not, and for whatever reason, it feels particularly tragic at the moment to be all alone in this big giant world where nothing is right and nothing makes sense.
Within a few minutes, I’ve finished the bottle. Part of me hopes my parents will not notice, because having a fight about my drinking problem does not really sound like the most enjoyable thing in the world at the moment. Then there is another part of me – a much larger part – that realizes that even if they did notice, they would not care. And that is the thought that cuts like a knife and reduces me to a quivering mass of tears and alcohol. I lamely toss the bottle toward the trash can. I miss and it crashes onto the floor, shattering. I have a hard time deciding what is more of a mess: me or the broken bottle. I finally decide that I win, then debate on whether or not to clean it up. Maybe if I just let go of everything, someone would notice.
I do not even want someone to care. I am not asking that much at this point. They really do not have to give a damn what happens to me, or how I am. I just want someone to know, to realize, that I am definitely not okay, that there is something wrong, something in me that is seriously broken and crushed. They could hate me, it would not matter, as loing as they just saw me. I am so sick of being invisible in this world, in this house, everywhere.
I startle as my phone rings, a little too loudly, in my pocket. It splits my head with some kind of ridiculous pain, and I start crying again. I quickly hit the silence button and slide it from my pocket. Private number, of course. I answer it just out of the longing to know that there are other humans on the planet, not because I expect it to be anything other than a telemarketer trying to sell me some kind of great car insurance. I would talk to them for awhile, maybe, before letting them in on the knowledge that I do not own a car.
“Hello,” I compose my voice slightly. It is still trembling, but it does not sound nearly so bad as I feel right now.
“Anna, I was hoping you would answer,” the voice is deep, a man’s, yet soft, gentle – it does not try to rip my head cleanly in half, “I have been trying to get ahold of you all day. I inmagine you slept for some time. I have been worried, though. I almost took you to the emergency room last night, you looked so awful. It is good to know that you are still alive, though.”
“Uh. Yeah. Do I know you?”
“You can call me Jack. I have your note. I would very much like to see you again, which is why I took it. You passed out last night before I had gotten you back. You looked like a mess. I was not certain that you would remember me this morning, so I left the note for you.”
“I have no idea who you are,” I admit, “but I read your note this morning. I want my map back. Why are you doing this to me? What is your motivation?”
“I am him, Anna. I am the man who gave you this map I now hold in my own hands, yet I do not know in what time or place. I do know, though, that you must have been very important to me, and I need to know why. I must know why I gave you this. I do not even know what this is, Anna. I mean, I do, yet I do not. I am uncertain of where it leads.”
“Alright, I am really hung over right now and have been purging my body of everything in it since the moment I woke up. I have no idea what I did last night, but I am never doing it again. On top of this, I am now drunk again, or at least slightly inebriated. Drunk and hung over enough that I am going to assume that I am hallucinating and there is not a strange man calling me and saying stuff that makes no sense at all. Hopefully tomorrow when I wake up, I will not feel so much like there is a possibility that I am dead. And if that happens, and if this is not a dream and a hallucination, well, I know where to find you, don’t I? I will come find you if I feel a need to, and until I do, I would really appreciate if you left me alone.”
He chuckles, but with little humor, it is a hollow, haunting sound, “oh, but you know you would not appreciate that at all, Anna. Scary as it is, I am all that you have got. And you seem like an adventurer to me, are you really going to shy away from this just because it does not fit perfectly into your routine like you wish it would?”
“I do not have routines.”
“But you do. Your whole life is about routines, is it not? You think you are free but you are not. You keep drinking a little more each day, thinking you are some kind of anarchist, but really you are just weak. You are a wimp, Anna. You blind yourself to the world with drugs and alcohol and whatever the hell else you are into. You think it is so hard and so painful, but you do not even know what pain is. When was the last time you were completely sober? Do you even remember? If it is not one thing, it is another, isn’t it? If you don’t drink one day, you feel so good about yourself, but chances are you’ve been high all day. Do you remember what the world looks like with a clear mind? Do you remember the way colors look when you are in your right mind, or the way flowers smell? Do you even remember anything at all? Do you remember any of your life, or are you drinking and drugging it away?”
“Look, you don’t even know me. You have nmo right to make assumptions about me and my life. You have not earned that right. Just butt out, okay?”
“No, because for whatever reason, Anna, your life means something,” his voice strains with passion, and I’m surprised he cares so much about this, “you have some kind of a purpose. And don’t ask me what it is or why it is you, because I certainly do not see anything particularly great or special in you. I just see a selfish, angry girl who is trying to send herself to an early grave.”
“Shut up.”
“Shut up or what, Anna? You are going to hang up on me? Fine, do it. But you will be back. You want this map back, I know it. But more than that, you are intrigued, I am guessing. It has been awhile since anyone has called you out, if anyone has ever called you out at all. If you want to know my opinion, which you do not, but I will give it nonetheless, I think you were waiting for this. I think you were asking, begging, screaming for this. You want someone to care, much as you pretend you don’t. It rips you to shreds that no one even noticed when you went downhill. How many years has it been, Anna? How long?”
“Awhile,” I admit, my voice softer than I intended, and breaking, cracking.
“Years?”
“A few.”
“Where are you?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Listen to me very carefully. I do not know why I am even bothering with you, because I do not think that you are worth it. But I am going to tell you what to do, and you are going to listen to me and do what I say. You are not going to argue with me or pretend that you are okay. You are just going to do it, then tomorrow you are going to come find me. Are we clear?”
“Yes.”
“Go get yourself something to drink. Alcohol does not count. Get yourself a glass of water. Drink the whole thing, okay? Then get yourself a glass of milk. Your stomach must be a mess these days, start taking care of it, you will want to keep it. I know some men without stomachs. It is not fun, you do not want to be one of them. If you can, then, eat something. But I imagine you are far too sick to keep anything down. If that is the case, then just go to bed. Sleep hard and long. Skip school tomorrow if you want to. You have my permission. I will call you around 4:00 tomorrow to make sure you are alright. When you wake up, make sure you drink something and eat something. No drugs, no alcohol. You will be alright. Do you think you can fall asleep, or are you yet too ill?”
“I can sleep,” I moan as I pull myself to my feet and grab a glass from the cupboard, I turn on the sink and fill it with water and take a gulp.
“Good. Now go do that. Anna. I am going to take care of you, alright?”
“I take care of myself.”
“You do a terrible job of it. Let someone else have a shot, why don’t you?”
“Right.”
“I am going to hang up now. Is that okay?”
“Yes.” No.
“Goodnight, Anna.”
“Goodnight, Jack. Or whoever you are.”
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